Many organizations have several different members who may be located in diverse geographic locations. This is often the case for businesses who may have several different locations. For example, a retail business can have several different stores in several different neighborhoods across a city. For national organizations, a retail business can have dozens of stores in several cities of different states.
While organizations such as retail businesses embrace this geographical diversity because it equates to more sales volume, this geographical diversity can also add to operation costs and to the complexity of running each retail front uniformly. Organizations, such as retail businesses, understand the value of repeat consumers associating a certain level of quality with a brand of a business. To achieve this consistent level of quality at each geographic location as perceived by an ordinary repeat consumer, each business under the umbrella of the brand must provide the same service(s) or product(s) (or both).
In order to provide exact same service(s) or product(s) (or both) at each geographic location, an organization must prepare a set of guidelines or standards that each business at a particular geographic location must follow. It is in this way that an organization can maintain a certain level of quality irrespective of the location of its business. In the past and currently, leaders of organizations, such as businesses, prepare standards and guidelines addressing quality on paper and distribute these paper standards and guidelines to each of its members. These paper documents can be sent via fax, mail, post, or courier. In some conventional organizations, documents can be distributed via e-mail in which each member of the organization would receive the document and print it out at the location received with a printer.
While the aforementioned delivery methods are advanced when compared to the plain post-and-mail traditional method of past, all of these methods still waste significant amounts of paper whenever a standard or guideline is updated by a leader of the organization. Further, lag time still exists between the completion of a standard or guideline and the actual receipt with implementation by a particular member. For example, even in the conventional e-mail context, a busy manager of local business may not have time to print out new guidelines or standards when a leader at the national level has e-mailed a change to all of the collective local businesses. This lag time in receiving a change in or receiving a completely new standard or guideline can be significant.
For example, if a leader at the national level wanted to introduce a new product or service at the same time at all geographic locations, those members who did not print out the guidelines when the e-mail containing the information about the new product or service would never know about the new product or service. Even more significant from a business perspective, if a leader of a business organization wanted to increase prices for a product or service across all geographic locations, those members who did not receive this directive would equate to substantial losses in profits for the business organization.
Once a local member of national organization receives a standard or guideline, success in implementing the standard or guideline is also not guaranteed. To help with implementing standards, leaders of organizations also provide quality tests or measures to its local members. Often these tests are on paper forms and they are self-administered by a member who fills out the form and then mails it back to the leader(s) of the organization. The leader(s) of the organization will sometimes outsource the grading of these forms to a third party agency who will compile the results of all members and provide scores to the leader(s). This grading “process” can take some time and if an organization is constantly changing its guidelines or standards, the leader(s) will never know the true performance of each of its members in maintaining a certain level of quality for product(s) or service(s) (or both).
Another drawback associated with quality tests or measures is that leader(s) often rely on its members to grade themselves. While honest answers from each member would help the overall organization to identify its members who are strong and its members who are weak, it becomes apparent that self-administered tests by members would not attract absolute honesty for obvious reasons. For example, a local member who is afraid that he may lose his membership from an organization due to low or poor performance on quality tests may inflate his true or actual scores in order to deceive leaders that the local member is performing adequately or above the normal range for concern.
Another problem with quality tests or measures and even the creation of policies and/or guidelines is the ability to track the evolution of these elements and any interrelationships among common elements. For example, in certain areas of businesses, certain elements can overlap. For example, in food product safety, procedures can be common to several different types of food products. When handling raw food, employees should wear gloves to prevent spreading germs. An organization may have guidelines or procedures for handling different types of specific food products. So if there is a guideline or procedure that is common to two or more different products, such as wearing gloves when handling a food product, it may be necessary for an organization to update each guideline or procedure under each product separately even if they share a common guideline or procedure.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a method or system that help track guidelines or procedures that may be common to different products or services. There is also a need in the art for a method and system that can provide members of an organization with the most current information on quality so that each of the members can provide uniform products or services (or both). There is a further need in the art for a method and system that can allow members of an organization to accurately measure its performance relative to quality information provided by the organization.